


You could turn and stay

by thesaddestboner



Series: in the shadows [2]
Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Angst, Detroit Tigers, F/M, Gender or Sex Swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-25
Updated: 2010-11-25
Packaged: 2017-10-14 03:00:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesaddestboner/pseuds/thesaddestboner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The first thing Max notices, when he enters the clubhouse, is Rick’s locker with its lone, pressed white jersey on a black plastic hanger.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	You could turn and stay

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY (belated) BIRTHDAY, [**LEARNTHEMUSIC**](http://learnthemusic.livejournal.com/)! HOPE YOU LIKE THIS! 
> 
> This is pretty short but believe me when I say there’s definitely going to be more in this ’verse (ugh, I can’t believe this has turned into a ’verse.) Surprisingly porn-less! Unless you count angst-porn as porn. 
> 
> Thanks to [**emeh**](http://emeh.livejournal.com/) and [**unreckless**](http://unreckless.livejournal.com/) for their help with this. 
> 
> This one takes place after [I think I saw you in the shadows](http://archiveofourown.org/works/144616) but before [In Stasis](http://archiveofourown.org/works/144617). None of this shit is in chronological order because I suck.
> 
> Title from “You Run Away,” by Barenaked Ladies.
> 
> You can find me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/thesaddestboner) and [tumblr](http://saddestboner.tumblr.com).

The first thing Max notices, when he enters the clubhouse, is Rick’s locker with its lone, pressed white jersey draped on a black plastic hanger. Someone had placed a small, framed photograph of Rick with his brothers on the top shelf.

Max ducks his head and heads straight for his own locker. He shrugs the strap of his duffel bag off his shoulder and begins to unbutton his shirt. Seeing Rick’s jersey just hanging there, limply, is like a slug to the gut and he can’t bring himself to keep looking at it.

A hand lands between his shoulder blades, thumping hard, and he jumps nearly five feet in the air.

“Fuck, Perry, what the hell,” Max says, laughing a little.

Perry grins and punches him lightly in the chest. “How was your offseason?”

Max rubs a hand back between his shoulder blades. “It was fine. Really didn’t do too much, just spent a lot of time at home with family and friends. You?”

“Went to Mexico for a little bit -” something pings at the back of Max’s brain at the mention of _Mexico_ “- and then I visited some family in Cali. Took my girlfriend to Disneyland. And then me and some college buddies of mine went to Vegas for a couple weeks.” Perry’s grin widens, but it’s grim and forced.

Max finishes unbuttoning his shirt and drops it over the back of the cushy leather chair in front of his stall. “Sounds nice.”

Perry glances at Rick’s empty stall and falls silent. Max looks too.

After a few minutes of awkward silence, Perry finally coughs and clears his throat. “It’s weird, him not being here. It’s not right.”

“No, it’s not,” Max agrees quietly.

Perry sighs and turns away from Rick’s locker, shuffles off to his own. “Yeah,” he says, tugging off his t-shirt. He drops it on the floor and picks up his undershirt.

“Yeah,” Max echoes, because he can’t think of anything else to say, can’t think of any way to make it better.

If he doesn’t get away from Perry, he’ll - he doesn’t know what he’ll do. He’ll say something, probably the wrong thing, and he’ll just make it worse. Perry doesn’t know that Rick’s out there, somewhere. Perry thinks he’s probably dead and Max wonders what’s worse, the secret he has to live with or the grief that’s crushing everyone else. He’s not entirely sure sometimes.

“It sucks,” Perry says. Max looks over at him; he’s white-knuckling the front of his jersey. He can practically feel Perry’s grief from across the room, chasing him out of the clubhouse.

Max finishes dressing himself in record time and hurries out to the field where Verlander is waiting to do some long toss with him, glove tucked under his arm.

-

Fans lean up against the chain-link fence and watch intently as Max and Verlander toss a ball around. A tall, dark-haired girl catches his eye and he thinks maybe - he shakes the thought out of his head. He’s been seeing Rick - Erica - everywhere since he came down to Lakeland for Spring Training and he really has to stop doing that to himself. It’s never either of them.

He thinks about her - it’s still hard for him to think of Rick and Erica as the same person - about Rick a lot and wonders if he’s safe, if he’s okay.

“Hey, earth to Scherzer.” Verlander’s mildly annoyed voice busts through his thoughts and scatters them. “Throw the damn ball already. I don’t got all day.”

“Sorry, man. Got distracted,” Max says, wrapping his fingers around the ball in a two-seam fastball grip.

Verlander smirks and flaps his mitt at him. “The girls ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

Max wings the ball wildly and Verlander leaps in the air to snag it, but it glances harmlessly off the tip of his glove. The pretty, dark-haired girl leans over the chain-link fence and rattles it, heckling Verlander mercilessly.

“You got hands of stone, Verlander,” she howls gleefully, cupping her hands around her mouth, “go back to Tigertown! You don't belong with the big boys!”

Verlander spins around and approaches the fence, glaring at her, but the corner of his mouth twitches up. “Hey, what'd I ever do to you? Did I forget to call you back or somethin’, sweetheart?”

Max trails after him, resting his glove on his hip, and locks gazes briefly with her. His heart starts pounding furiously in his chest and his fingers go numb and tingly. It’s Rick. It can’t be anyone else.

“I think she's got too much class for you, V,” Max teases Verlander, eyes still on Rick. Rick reaches up and tugs at the collar of the navy t-shirt he’s wearing; Max can see a **#37** inked into the collar with white marker.

"Ouch, you really got me there, man," Verlander snarks, turning his attention back to Rick. Verlander glances at the number written on his shirt collar in Max’s handwriting. “Hey, where’d you get that shirt?”

“I bought it.” Rick lowers his arm and wraps his hands around the chain-links, offering Verlander a smug smile.

“That’s a lie. We don’t sell those shirts.” Verlander glances back at Max, one bushy eyebrow quirking up. “You in the habit of handin’ out your shirts to your booty calls?”

Max grabs onto his shoulder and tugs him away from the fence. “Cool it, man. I know her. I gave her that shirt.”

Verlander snorts derisively and steps back, waving dismissively at Max. “You’re lucky that shit didn’t turn up on the Internet.”

Rick opens his mouth to fire off some smart-assed retort, no doubt, but Max recaptures his attention. He steps over to the chain-link fence and tucks his mitt against his hip. “Hey,” he says, smiling a little. “Long time, no see.”

Rick smiles back, still holding onto the metal links. “I couldn’t stay away,” he says, reaching up to brush his hair behind his shoulder. “I thought I wouldn’t be able to come down here.”

“Are you staying here? In the area?” Max asks. There’s so much he wants to ask Rick slamming into his brain at once that he can apparently only speak in sentence fragments.

“For now. I might take that trip to Mexico. I haven’t decided yet,” he says, dropping his arm.

Max finally manages to untangle his thoughts and form a coherent sentence. “You just took off.”

Rick looks down and shrugs, wrapping his hands back around the metal links. “I’m sorry. I freaked out.” He glances back up at Max. “I wanted to stay, but I couldn’t.”

“You want to grab something to eat?” Max blurts out, feeling stupid the second the words leave his mouth. He’s usually so good with words and he hates that he isn’t now that Rick’s back. He wishes he had something better to say. “There’s a lot to catch up on.”

“Yeah, sure. Sounds good to me.” Rick offers him a small smile and Max reaches out, brushing his thumb briefly over Rick’s knuckles.

Verlander coughs loudly behind them and says, irritably, “Hey, we gonna finish long tossin’ or what?”

Max looks back at him and nods curtly. “I’ll be right there.” He turns back to Rick. “I can call you when we’re done. Or you could come by . . . If you wanted.”

“A phone call is fine,” Rick says, stepping away from the fence. “Bye, Max.”

“Bye . . .” Max trails off, realizing he’s not really sure what to call him. Rick turns and slips through the crowd, and Max follows him with his eyes until he can’t see him anymore.

When he turns back around, Verlander is standing with his hands on his hips, mouth angled into his trademark douchebag smirk. His eyes twinkle and Max is pretty sure that’s not a good sign.

Max rolls his eyes at Verlander. “ _What_?”

“What’s up with you and that chick, man?” Verlander asks. His nasally, lightly accented voice has never sounded more annoying to Max until now. He shrugs. “She’s kinda hot.”

Max stoops down and picks up the discarded baseball, popping it into his mitt, ignoring the cool, tingly feeling swooping through his stomach. “She’s just a girl,” he says, flipping the ball to Verlander. “Anyway, I thought you wanted to do some long toss.”

Verlander captures the ball against his chest with his glove. “Right, right.”

Verlander whips the ball to Max, who snags it in his mitt, and it’s like a light switch in his head has been flipped. All he’s thinking about is baseball now, stitches and leather, the warm Lakeland sun beating down on the back of his bare neck, and it’s nice.

-

Rick is waiting by the abandoned players’ lot after the team’s morning workouts as promised, and Max realizes he hadn’t really been expecting him to show up. He’s still wearing the old shirt of Max’s. It’s a little large on him, and it hangs off Rick’s shoulders like the pressed white jersey hangs off the plastic hanger in his locker.

A couple of the guys size Rick up as they head to their cars, eyes drifting to his chest, and Max has to curl his hands into fists to keep from doing anything dumb. He knows Rick can more than handle himself, so he just shoves his hands into his pockets. It’s just so _weird_ and he can’t even begin to imagine how Rick feels about all of it.

Perry is the last to step out of the training complex and he stops dead in his tracks when he spots the two of them.

“Hey, man,” Max calls out to Perry and gives him a wave.

Perry nods and walks over to them. “I don’t believe you’ve introduced us, Maxwell,” he says, eyes still on Rick. Perry flashes Rick a smile that Max doesn’t entirely trust. “Falling asleep on the job here, buddy.”

Rick extends a hand to Perry, who accepts and gives him a firm handshake in return. “I’m Erica.” He sounds like he’s testing out the name or something, to see if it fits.

“Erica?” Perry furrows his brow at Max. He looks squinty and suspicious. “You guys get back together or something?”

Max blinks in confusion, then realizes Perry thinks Rick is his ex-girlfriend. “Oh. Uh. No. We’re just going out for lunch.”

Perry clucks his tongue in mock disapproval. “Well, if it doesn’t work out this time, you know where to find me.” He slaps Max on the back with a short laugh and heads off.

“That wasn’t awkward at all,” Rick says, glancing after him.

“Sorry,” Max says, feeling sheepish. He rubs a hand over his face. “I blanked.”

Rick looks at him, tucking his arms across his chest. A stray tendril of hair curls over his throat, where his Adam’s apple would have been. Max reaches to brush it away but stops himself in time and lets his arm flop to his side.

“You must be starving,” Rick says, looking back toward the players’ lot. “Let’s go. I’m getting kind of hungry too.”

“Yeah,” Max says quietly, fishing out his car keys, “okay.”

-

They drive around for a little while after lunch before Max comes across an old, rundown baseball diamond. The dirt basepaths are overrun with dandelions and scraggly grass, and if there hadn’t been a set of dilapidated bleachers nearby he might have just assumed it was an unpaved parking lot or something.

Rick turns to him, pressing his hand over Max’s arm. “Let’s check it out. You got a ball with you?”

“Glovebox,” Max says.

Rick pops the latch and the glovebox falls open; a baseball rolls out and he retrieves it, rolling it around in his right hand. He slides his fingers along the red stitching and shoots a tiny smile at Max, corners of his mouth twitching up.

“You just carry baseballs around with you at all times?” he asks, raising the ball in his hand and shifting his fingers into the grip for a circle change. He brings his arm down slowly, twisting his wrist.

Max smiles at Rick and looks back out the windshield, at the dark winding stretch of road in front of them. “Yeah, I guess so.” Max drums his fingers on the steering wheel. He pulls into a rectangle of cracked asphalt that may or may not be a parking spot and kills the engine.

Rick flips the ball to Max and gets out, heading right for the diamond. He reaches the sagging chain-link fence that surrounds the field first and scales it gracefully, dropping in the dirt on the other side.

Max pockets the ball and follows him over the fence, landing on his hands and knees. He pushes himself slowly to his feet and brushes his hands off on his pants. “I feel like I’m fourteen again,” he says, grinning over at Rick and producing the baseball.

Rick grabs it from him and flips it in the air. Neither of them moves to catch it and the ball hits the ground and skips away. “You were supposed to catch that,” Rick laughs.

“Infield fly rule is in effect.” Max runs it down and picks it up, lobbing it over to Rick.

Rick captures the ball in his cupped hands and cradles it against his chest. “You can’t just decide that. I’m playing under protest then.” He fires the ball back to Max with a little zip.

Max smirks and moves his fingers into the grip for his four-seamer. “Think you can handle the high heat?”

Rick rolls his eyes and holds out his hands for the ball. “I can handle anything you throw at me.”

Max rotates the ball in his hand and spreads his fingers apart a little. “I’m just joking. Wouldn’t want to hurt you.”

Rick glares at him and puts his hands on his hips, mouth thinning as he sucks his lips in. “What’re you saying?”

“Nothing! I’m just saying.” Max throws the ball back to him without any heat. “You’re not wearing a mitt.”

“Oh, okay.” Rick looks down at the ball in his hand before dropping it in the dirt.

“What’s the matter?” Max asks, taking a few steps closer.

“Nothing.” Rick looks away, evading Max’s gaze.

“Are you sure about that?” Max picks up the ball and tucks it back into Rick’s hand, closing his fingers around it.

Rick looks at him briefly before glancing down at the baseball. He flicks a fingernail at one of the stitches. “Yeah. No. I don’t know.”

“You miss it,” he says.

“Yeah. Throwing a ball around just isn’t the same.” He looks back up at Max. “It’s like being on the disabled list, or something. Only I know I’m never going to get activated.”

Max wraps his hand around Rick’s on the baseball. “Maybe you’ll - ”

He shakes his head and finally pulls his hands away from Max’s to tear them through his hair. “It’s not going to happen.”

“How do you know that?” Max slips the ball into his back pocket and crosses his arms over his chest.

“I don’t. It’s just a feeling I have,” Rick says, dropping his arms.

“Maybe if you could figure out why this happened in the first place - ”

Rick cuts him off. “Don’t you think I’ve been trying?” He laughs sharply, an ugly, unhappy sound.

“I could help,” Max says quietly.

Rick glares at him, eyes glassy like dark marbles. “You can’t,” he says, pacing like a cornered animal. “Why aren’t you freaking out?”

“What?” Max asks. He’s missed something here, he’s pretty sure of it.

“From the very beginning, you’ve been, you’ve - ” Rick throws up his hands in exasperation. “Why aren’t you freaking out that you pretty much had sex with a guy?”

Max stares at him. Everything comes to a grinding halt. “What? What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about. Don’t play dumb,” Rick says, stepping up into Max’s personal space. “Even if you think you don’t, you do.”

Max rubs a hand over his forehead, as if that’ll jar his thoughts into action or something. “I don’t know - ”

Rick crosses his arms over his chest and sets his jaw. “That’s bullshit.”

“What do you want me to tell you, Rick? Do you _want_ me to freak out on you or something?” Max asks.

Rick snorts. “Of course I don’t. Why would I want that?”

“Then why the third degree?” Max asks.

“Because _I’ve_ been freaking out pretty much the whole time? Why do you get to be calm?”

Max shakes his head and reaches for Rick, but he backs away. “I don’t know.”

“That’s not good enough.” Rick turns his back on Max and starts walking toward the car, arms held stiffly at his sides. “I’m leaving. I’ll walk back.”

“Wait.” Max hurries after him and touches his wrist, but Rick jerks his hand away. “Rick, _wait_.”

Rick stops and glances over his shoulder at him, holding his arm against his chest almost protectively. “What do you want?”

“I don’t know why I didn’t freak out,” he says, holding his hands out to Rick placatingly. “I - I just _didn’t_.”

“Why _didn’t_ you?” Rick’s voice creaks, he sounds close to his breaking point, and Max wants to turn away but he doesn’t.

“Does it matter?” he asks.

“It matters to me,” Rick says, staring him down, his expression unreadable.

Max glances down at the ground and tucks his hands into his pockets. “I guess I decided I didn’t care.”

“Are you serious?” Rick laughs in disbelief.

“Yeah, I am.” Max touches the inside of Rick’s elbow gently with his thumb. Rick doesn’t pull back or push his hand away, so he leaves it in place.

“What are you saying?” Rick asks, scrunching his brow.

Max laughs, wrapping his fingers loosely around Rick’s elbow. “I don’t know.”

Rick shakes his head and the corner of his mouth twitches up briefly. “You don’t know anything, do you?”

“Nope.” Max leans in and kisses him softly.

Rick pauses slightly before kissing him back and Max lets out a pleased murmur; he’d expected to be stopped cold. Rick slides a hand up into Max’s hair and pulls him a little closer. His hand is cool on the back of Max’s neck.

Rick breaks the kiss and steps back, pressing his fingertips against his mouth. “What was that?”

“Seems kind of self-explanatory to me,” Max says, laughing slightly.

Rick lowers his hand. “No, you know what I mean.”

Max shrugs and nods, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Yeah. I guess I do.” He looks away from Rick and kicks at a small rock in his path. “I missed you.”

“That’s not answering the question,” Rick says.

“I thought about you a lot,” Max continues, still looking at the ground. He glances at Rick. “I did kind of freak out a little after you left.”

Rick raises his eyebrows at him. “And now you’re not?”

“I - I don’t really know what’s going on here. I just.” Max reaches out and wraps his hand loosely around Rick’s. He steals a glance at him; Rick is looking down at their hands, expression unreadable. “I want you to stay.”

“How? As your _girlfriend_ or something?” Rick sounds incredulous.

“It doesn’t have to be like that. I just want you to stick around,” Max says.

Rick slips his hand out of Max’s, fingers brushing against the underside of his wrist. “I’ll think about it.”

“Okay,” Max says, after a few long seconds, pulling his keys out of his pocket. He finally tears his eyes away from Rick to glance over his shoulder at the car. “Let’s go back.”

**Author's Note:**

> The author of this piece intends no insult, slander, or copyright infringement, and is not profiting from this work. This story is a complete work of fiction and does not necessarily reflect on the nature of the individuals featured. This is for entertainment purposes only. If you found this story while Googling your name or the names of your friends, hit the back button now.


End file.
